Just going to say it, you are killing the game.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by InnerDruid, May 6, 2019.

  1. InnerDruid New Member

    This is to Daybreak.

    There have always been guilds that shoot through the raids in a new expansion. Then there are casual players. And then there are the guilds of people that want to raid, and even have some pretty skilled people, but they struggle with raids and they win some and they lose some, and they certainly don't finish the raids in an expansion before another one comes out.

    These are the ones you are killing. I don't know what the numbers are but I see the results. Players that have been logging in multiple nights a week for many years to raid are now fading away.

    You don't want to hear it, but you messed up. In trying to make every raid a challenge for every guild you went overboard. Could you have done it differently, kept from demoralizing players right out of the game and still prevented the ubermost guilds from chewing through it all in short order? Maybe, but the fact is the first raids in an expansion need to have a substantially lower difficulty level than what you did in TBL. By all means, go ahead and make the last few raids a lot harder, that might accomplish your aims (unless one of those aims was to get people out of the game).

    These guilds don't even have the prospect of recruiting enough new blood to matter, because it's not there anymore. Hell, we were already losing a player every so often due to real life death because the player base is so old. Driving them away before then is crazy. Granted, Daybreak's business model seems to be buying old products and letting them die, it seems to make little sense for you all to be speeding this up.

    Now the flamers are going to emerge, spouting whatever. I understand their root complaint is that they did it, how dare anyone want it made easier? The fact remains that the primary reason they were able to was because of being guilded with copious numbers of like minded individuals with lots of playtime. The other reason they were able to do it is because they aren't the only ones paying to play. They aren't going to be able to keep on doing what they obviously like doing if this continues.

    Bottom line: The philosophy behind the raid encounter tuning is broken. Make the earlier ones easier, and make the later ones harder. Keep everybody busy or lose 'em.

    Or merge some servers. Or both. Or nothing. I've paid on four accounts for twenty years without breaks, and I am starting not to care. Think about that.
  2. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    Sometimes they listen to the wrong people.

    You know, people who say "I'm an a-hole, antisocial, and like it like that." Very unapologetic. And, they take swipes with that attitude at boxers, casual, etc, etc.....
    Tutunka likes this.
  3. Thrillho Augur

    Either you lose players due to content being to easy, or you lose players due to content being too difficult. You lose players either way, as with all games. Unfortunately, it's a 20 year old game, and fresh blood is in short supply. There are no new players to fill the ranks of those who move on. It's happening in all guilds on all servers.
  4. Warpeace Augur


    Would not solve any of the complaints you actually have.
    Duder, Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Yinla like this.
  5. Alarya Augur

    WP you old soandso! Where have you BEEN!?!?!
  6. Ruven_BB Augur

    The issue that hurts mid tier guilds is when the current group content is comparable to last expansion's raid gear. And 4 pieces of gear are better than current raid gear.

    Why work with 53 other folks when you can load up the box team and essentially get to the same level if you are raiding an expansion behind?

    This mistake was made before and a large number of mid tier'd guilds folded. Group gear (although some chase loot if limited to number) should be less than raid gear 2 expansions back. If not, you slaughter the mid tier, that typically feed the high end guilds. If those guilds don't fill spots, the raiding game dies.

    Ruven
  7. BlueberryWerewolf Augur


    I am fine with this position as long as the group game is not tuned to keep current raid players challenged, because then you end up with a feedback loop where people who don't raid current content also can't engage current group content, and there's no reason for them to want to because group content rewards aren't good enough to justify the challenge.

    Tune the group content to be challenging, but not impossible, for six people in gear equivalent to raid gear three expansions back. Reward them with gear equivalent to raid gear two expansions back.

    If you want to tune current group content to current raid gear, you need to reward gear equivalent to current raid gear. If you don't want the rewards to be that good, then you have to tune the content accordingly so that the people who would actually benefit from the rewards also have a chance of actually completing it.
    Skuz, Coagagin and Xianzu_Monk_Tunare like this.
  8. Tucoh Augur

    As a non-raiding person with a box team that got a huge boost with the amazing T3 gear (and the stupidly easy to get T4 GMM gear) I agree completely. Group gear should be worse than last expansion's raid gear with enough margin that people will be motivated to join mid-tier raiding forces to get that gear.
    FubarEQ likes this.
  9. Monkman Augur

    Yes, even those of us who have run open raids are questioning running any ROS raids due to how close the group hear is to it (yes the group gear is lacking raid focus). In years past we’ve run the previous expansion open raids.. this year it’s like why bother.
    Yinla likes this.
  10. Drayman Elder

    The counter to that is that if you nerf group gear by that much, new expansions will be more of a ghost town than they already are. Many group players are completely stuck on content in spite of the new group gear.
    Dyna likes this.
  11. Buri Augur

    I agree with the OP, this is exactly what's happened in our mid-level guild. We went from raiding 3 nights a week to "romping" (clearing normal zones in raid format) one night a week and our only raiding is joining MS open raids. The current content raids are too difficult for a guild that doesn't raid hardcore.
    Dyna likes this.
  12. smash Augur

    Gotta say you totally wrong on it,

    If people are GETTING equipment that is 2 expansions back, that mean they will have equipment that is 3 expansions back, And with that, they cannot do GROUP content whatsoever.
    There already people with items that is 2 with expansions back, when they start an expansion, what they have got at present, but they cannot do the group content.

    So basically your suggestion would kill the midbase of the players and they would likely stop playing, if they can only be in older content year after year, without hope of catching up.

    And if you compare the GROUP equipmemt from TBL vs RAID equipment, the still a big difference, focuses, clicks, heroics and so on. So people still have incentive to raid, this is how it has been for years, and so far it has been a success.
    Ghubuk likes this.
  13. Voxynn Elder

    This post lost all credibility with these two sentences.

    Do you realize with out Hard core raiders, This game would die literally over night?

    11 Hardcore Raid guilds translates into 54 raid slots per 594 (single account) raiders. Out of those raiders I'd hazard a guesstimate of at LEAST 3/4ths (396) have at least one box (+396 accounts) and at LEAST half of that 396 have 2 accounts or more (1 main, 2 alt accounts more more for a base of 3)

    Lets take a look at a lowball guesstimate.
    594 mains in all hardcore raiding guilds.
    +396 people play at least 1 more account out of that 594 accounts (overall total so far 990 total accounts so far)

    Of the 396 people (out of the original 594 mains) have MORE then 1 box guesstimate's of at LEAST half.. so add another 198 (baseline) accounts.

    Total accounts for hard core raiders (lowballing) 1,188 accounts.

    Taking what I know of multiple players in the hard core raid scene (I am a casual grp player, but have many friends in many guilds across all servers) I personally know of at LEAST 10 players who box 7 - 15 toons at once (7-15 accounts)

    And I know that the overall number of boxers is actually closer to 90% of the game on blue servers.

    90% of 594 = 534 players box out of the 594.

    534 x 2 = 1068 total boxes (at one account per box player)

    Thats not including players who box 3-15 accounts at once .. Thats ONLY .. those who actively play 2 accounts at once (which is the Norm in EQ now days)
  14. Voxynn Elder

    Now whats that got to do with the OP you ask ?

    Simple. You take away the hard raids. You lose low ball HALF with a ceiling of 3/4ths of the overall EQ population.

    The OP is the vast vast VAST minority of this whole game. Matter of fact I have never in game or here on the forums EVER seen more then 10 people saying stuff is too hard an its literally killing the game.

    To include THIS thread.
  15. Laronk Augur

    Having been in a mid tier guild. The problem is a good percentage of mid tier guild players don't even put in the work to learn their class, they don't know their burn rotation they don't know what they're doing. You can find people in mid tier guilds that don't even have a full set of augs.

    I'm sure we can go find a player in a mid tier guild who wants to raid that could get upgrades in GMM but won't even put in the time required to do that. Sure there is also a bunch of quality dedicated players too but when you have DPs that is doing 1/3 of what they should be doing what are you going to do.

    I box but sometimes I do pugs, I routinely see players who can't even out DPS a wiz Merc. If people don't put the time in to learn their class properly the suck will continue.

    The answer is probably 24 man raids, not sure how to make that happen though
    Lannin, Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Pirlo like this.
  16. Belkar_OotS Augur

    I think reducing the spawn rate on the mechanics in GMM1 would go a very long way in giving mid and low tier raid groups with target selection, or make it so GMM is not linear, and can be attempted in any order.
  17. Avory Augur

    I 100% agree and boy did I get flamed for bringing it up.

    It seems to me there are very easy fixes to EQ's whoa's but Devs seem to not care, listen and probably because they assume it would be a lot of work and that's actually understandable. I actually believe some big changes could breath life into EQ but we keep getting "expansions" despite a shrinking player base.

    We don't need a bigger world, we need a more interesting world based *in* areas that have already been created. If time were spent revamping zones I absolutely believe people would come back to EQ, or leave progression servers for live servers.

    I could write up an epic quest for Rangers in a few days and I believe it would take as much time for Devs to make it a reality... instead we get incredibly massive quests that give us items that are replaced only months later. Lots of work for items that hold little meaning to us as players.

    I'd like to see EQ return to it's roots where zone design is key. Remember when OS was re-released during ROS? That place was packed till they day it was swiped away from us. That single zone had more players in it at any given time than are in all of TBL, and it's 20 years old.

    No tasks needed, no collectibles needed just good zone design that actually feels like a world you want to surround yourself with.

    Just meh thoughts~
    Dyna and JettaTDI like this.
  18. Avory Augur

    And the real sad part is it separates raiders from casuals that much more.
  19. Avory Augur

    I'd like to point out that he did not claim Devs should not make hard raids, he supported having t2/t3 raids be hard, maybe harder than they are now. But if lower end guilds can't raid even t1 and group gear is better than or equal to the last expansions gear then they can't raid TBL and have no reason to raid ROS in this case.

    This will cause the guild to fold due to inactivity.

    I tend to agree with his position as TBL is a dead expansion in just a few months and I have never once seen that in all my time in EQ.
    Dyna, Yinla and Drayman like this.
  20. Voxynn Elder

    I've been playing EQ since Velious straight threw to now. Not 1 break. As a raider then casual then raider back down to casual.

    The guild I am in I can tell you flat out as has been pointed out up above in another post. The problem is not that mid tier guilds cant "beat" content. The problem is that mid tier guilds have players that are lazy an don't know truly what their classes are capable of. In TBL by all raider's I've spoken to about it, its 100% about CC for Stratos raid (T1) Now if you are a critical class in that raid (CC'er) and have no idea how to keep mob's locked down easily.

    From the outside it looks like a weak guild when in reality its not a weak guild, its a weak individual player skill wise, that has a critical role in that very specific raid, that is holding EVERYONE else in that raid back.

    TBL is exactly like old school Gates of Discord in the same manner, that one lazy / incompetent raider, can and WILL hold the entire raid system back.
    Duder, Arraden, Tygart and 1 other person like this.